IRS hearing: The takeaways

The ousted head of the IRS was grilled for four hours Friday, but we still don’t know how the tea party targeting really started.

What we do know from the first hearing since the scandal broke: IRS officials haven’t convinced lawmakers they played it straight with Congress. It’s not over for the IRS workers. And witnesses are being beat up too much for these to be “just the facts” hearings.

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Steven Miller apologizes for IRS

Camp to IRS: 'That is lying'

Here are the top takeaways from Friday’s hearing:

How’d this really start: Who knows?

The big question that’s on everyone’s mind didn’t get answered during the House Ways and Means Committee hearing Friday: Who, exactly, had the bright idea at the IRS to zero in on conservative groups with search terms like “tea party” and “patriot”?

Lawmakers asked Steven Miller, the acting IRS commissioner who has since been forced to resign, to detail how the targeting program began — but his answers didn’t clear up what happened or why.

But under questioning from Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Miller said agents did not create search terms more commonly associated with liberal groups like “progress” or “organizing.”

More — and broader — hearings are coming

Committee Chairman Dave Camp is already expanding the scope of the hearings beyond the targeting scandal.

He’s also drawing in other IRS actions that have had conservatives stewing for a long time — like a March 2012 Huffington Post story that he says disclosed confidential donor information for the National Organization for Marriage.

And he cited a ProPublica article that said the IRS had leaked the applications conservative groups had submitted for tax-exempt status.

“It would be a mistake to treat this as just one scandal,” Camp said.

Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania picked up on that theme during the hearing, asking Miller about the National Organization for Marriage leak as well as the possible sharing of confidential tax information with the White House.

When Miller said he didn’t know about that, Gerlach asked him — in a tone that made it clear it wasn’t optional — to “check all of your records, all of your notes, all of your emails and get back to this committee.”

Democrats are mad, but they aren’t taking it out on Obama

Sure, Democrats want everyone to know they’re outraged too. But so far, they’re not demanding that President Barack Obama do more — at least not in public. They’re perfectly happy to take it out on the IRS.

Democrats privately planned to attack what they considered partisan aspects of the inspector general’s report, but they agreed to reframe the conversation around the mismanagement and need for agency reform instead, according to a source who was present for the discussion.